KXmlGuiWindow

KXmlGuiWindow provides a full main window view with menubars, toolbars, a statusbar and a main area in the centre for a large widget. Most KDE applications will derive from this class as it provides an easy way to define menu and toolbar layouts through XML files (this technology is called XMLGUI). While we will not be using XMLGUI in this tutorial, we will use it in the next.

In order to have a useful KXmlGuiWindow, we must subclass it. So we create two files, a mainwindow.cpp and a mainwindow.h which will contain our code.

mainwindow.h

ifndef MAINWINDOW_H

define MAINWINDOW_H

include <KXmlGuiWindow>

include <KTextEdit>

class MainWindow : public KXmlGuiWindow
{

public:
MainWindow(QWidget *parent=0);

private:
KTextEdit* textArea;

};

endif

First we Subclass KXmlGuiWindow on line 7 with class MainWindow : public KXmlGuiWindow.

Then we declare the constructor with MainWindow(QWidget *parent=0);.

And finally we declare a pointer to the object that will make up the bulk of our program. KTextEdit is a generic richtext editor with some KDE niceties like cursor auto-hiding.

mainwindow.cpp

include "mainwindow.h"

MainWindow::MainWindow(QWidget *parent) : KXmlGuiWindow(parent)
{

textArea = new KTextEdit();
setCentralWidget(textArea);
setupGUI();

}
First, of course, on line 1 we have to include the header file containing the class declaration.

On line 5, we initialise our text editor with an object. Then on line 6 we use KXmlGuiWindow's built-in setCentralWidget() function which tells the KXmlGuiWindow what should appear in the central section of the window.

Finally, KXmlGuiWindow::setupGUI() is called which does a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff and creates the default menu bars (Settings, Help).

Back to main.cpp

In order to actually run this window, we need to add a few lines in main.cpp: